


The Screw Fell Out

by Lyri



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Drug Use, F/F, M/M, Mentions of Violence, jensen and jared are both 17, mentions of bullying, mentions of homophobic attitudes, mentions of non-sexual child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 09:49:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3442670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyri/pseuds/Lyri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, detention can be the best time of your life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Screw Fell Out

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based the classic '80's movie 'The Breakfast Club', but if you're looking for a scene-by-scene, line-by-line re-telling, then you're going to be disappointed. The title of this fic is taken from a line in the original movie.
> 
> This was originally posted to my Live Journal - sweet_lyri - about five years ago. I'm just switching everything over, making stuff more accessible.

It’s seven fifty-two on a Saturday morning. There are three cars in the parking lot of West Hills High School. And one really beat-up Vespa.

No one wants to be there, they all have better things to do, somewhere else to be, but they all wearily make their way to the library and drop into the nearest available chair that is as far away from the other people as possible, while still being in the same room.

Mr. Morgan stands at the front of the room and watches the clock as it slowly ticks towards eight, only then does he turn his glare to the five students spread throughout the room.

“You all know why you’re here,” he says gruffly, “and whatever it is, I don’t give a shit. I’ve got better things to do with my Saturday than sit here and babysit you bunch of delinquents.”

AJ Buckley chokes on his tongue, whether it’s from being called a delinquent or being lumped in with the other students in the room, no one really knows. They don’t really care, either.

Mr. Morgan looks at his watch, despite the clock on the wall. “It’s eight oh three. You have six hours and fifty-seven minutes to sit and contemplate the actions that resulted in you being here getting on my nerves.”

At the back of the room, Jensen Ackles snorts and tips back on the legs of his chair.

“You will not talk, you will not move from your seats until I tell you,” Mr. Morgan continues.

“But, what if we need to go to the bathroom?” Danneel Harris asks, her hand half raised in the air.

Mr. Morgan glowers at her. “You’ll hold it until I tell you you can go.”

Danneel squeaks and tries to sink back into her chair.

“I’ll be in the office right across the hall. If I hear one peep out of any of you, I’ll make you curse the day you were born.”

Ackles laughs. “My, my, JD, you sound awfully tense this morning. What’s the matter? Ms. Ferris not putting out?”

“That’s enough outta you, Ackles. One more comment and you’ll be spending next Saturday in my company, too.”

Ackles rolls his eyes. “Yes, because that threat is absolutely terrifying. Watch me as I quake in my boots.”

Mr. Morgan sneers at the teenager, then turns on his heel and leaves the library.

The sounds of his office door slamming reverberates throughout the room, and the students collectively relax, melting into their chairs as they mentally prepare themselves to face the next seven hours in each other’s company.

In the very back corner of the room, Misha Collins lets out a loud snore and burrows deeper into his arms as he rests them on the table top.

Jared Padalecki shakes his head in disbelief. “Morgan hasn’t even been gone thirty seconds. How the hell does he do it?”

“It’s Misha Collins,” Danneel says drily, picking at her fingernails. “He’s a freak. Who cares how he does it?”

“What, just because he’s a little different, that makes him a freak?” Jared asks. If that was the case, then Jared is really fucked.

Danneel waves a perfectly manicured hand in Misha’s direction, as if that explains everything.

Jared shakes his head and vows to ignore her for the rest of the day.

“So, what are you in for?” Danneel asks.

“Um, Mr. Morgan said no talking,” AJ says from the other side of the room.

Danneel whirls to face him. “Who asked you, nerd?”

AJ merely shrugs, not even a little intimidated by the cheer queen’s outburst, and Jared feels an odd sort of pride.

“Leave him alone, Danni, we’re all in the same boat here,” Jared says with a sigh, his plan to ignore the cheerleader already out the window.

“Yeah, Princess, leave him alone,” Ackles says mockingly. “Better listen to your boyfriend and do as he says, otherwise he won’t take you to Prom.”

Jared sighs to himself. He is so not in the mood to deal with Ackles today of all days. He really should have known that Ackles would be here, in detention. After all, it’s where he spends the majority of his time at school. If he’d known, then he would be prepared for facing the next seven hours not ten feet from the guy. But he didn’t, so he’s not, and Jared really hopes he can hold it together, and not, like, do anything.

Because that would be kind of embarrassing.

Danneel turns to face the resident bad boy. “Jared is not my boyfriend, dickwad.”

Ackles holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry, my mistake.” He folds his hands on the table top and leans forward to look at Danneel intently. “And tell me, how do you feel about that? Do you want Jared to be your boyfriend? Is that why you’re here, Princess? You find out the jockstrap was in Saturday detention, and you just had to think of something daring enough that’d get you sentenced here, too, and you figured that all it would take would be for your eyes to meet across the library and sparks would fly, and the rest, as they say, would be history?”

Danneel glares at him. “You know, I think you should listen to Morgan’s rule and keep to the whole no talking thing, ‘cause I can’t imagine anyone would want to listen to anything you have to say.”

Ackles grins. “Ah, Princess, you’d be surprised how many people want to listen to what I’ve got to say.” He leans back in his chair and props his feet up on the table, his hands behind his head.

“So what are you in here for, anyway?” Danneel asks him, curiosity getting the best of her. “You set fire to the chemistry lab again?”

Ackles puts a hand to his chest. “You heard about that?” he gasps. “I’m touched. Really.”

“I was in the room, asshole,” Danneel spits. “You almost set my hair on fire, too.”

Ackles contemplates her long red tresses for a second. “And what a tragedy that would have been.”

“You would have paid for however many salon appointments it took to fix it.”

Ackles snorts. “Is that why you’re here? You ditch class so you could go to the salon?”

Danneel’s face grows red and she turns away from Ackles to face the front of the room again.

“Seriously?” Jared squawks. “You skipped classes so that you could go get your hair done?” It didn’t look all that much different than it ever did.

“It was my nails, alright?” Danneel protests. “It was the only appointment they had and I needed to get a manicure and pedicure before Chad’s party this weekend.”

Jared grunts. “Yeah, ‘cause getting caught pulling a stunt like that, I’m sure you’ll still be allowed to go to the party.”

Danneel shrugs. “My dad said I could still go. Mom says I’m grounded for a month. I’m still considering who it’s better to piss off.”

Jared frowns. His parents grounded him for two months after they found out he had Saturday detention, and the reasons behind it. He also has to hand over the keys to his car as soon as he gets home. He knows it has more to do with why he did what he did than the act itself, but it still hurts.

“Oh, god,” Ackles groans. “The drama of not being allowed to go to Chad Michael Douche-Bag’s party. However will you cope? Will you be exorcised from the popular crowd if you don’t show up? Will you be shunned?”

“You’d know all about being shunned, wouldn’t you, Ackles?” Danneel says with an evil grin. “I’ll bet you’ve never been to a party your whole life.”

“I’ll have you know that I have better things to do with my time than to party with you brain dead morons,” Ackles throws at her. 

“Please, like you actually have friends.”

Jared frowns. Danneel has a point. Jared has never seen Ackles with anyone he might consider to be the guy’s friend.

“Just because they don’t go to this school does not mean I don’t have friends,” Ackles tells her, but there’s an underlying tone of embarrassment to his voice.

“That’s, like, the lamest excuse ever!” Danneel laughs. “’You wouldn’t know them, they don’t go here’,” she mocks. 

“They’re older,” Ackles says with a scowl and stands up from the table so fast his chair tips over, crashing into the table behind and storms off through the library, tipping books from each shelf he passes.

Jared can tell that Danneel’s words hit a nerve with Ackles, but he never expected a reaction like this. Ackles is the rebel, the guy who doesn’t care about authority, or what other people think of him.

But as Jared watches him tear across the room, flinging chairs out of his path and pulling books from the shelves, Ackles looks almost human, almost like the person Jared imagines himself - 

The door flies open, cutting off Jared’s inner ramblings before he can think something he probably shouldn’t, and Mr. Morgan storms back into the room.

“What’s all this noise?” he asks, before his eyes lock on Ackles. “What did I say about leaving your seats? You just bought yourself another detention, Ackles.”

Jared can’t help but notice the almost relieved breath Ackles lets out, even as he stares Morgan down.

“Oh, come on, JD. That all you got? Another Saturday detention? It’s like you’re not even trying, man.”

Morgan is all but simmering with anger. “Alright, two weeks. You wanna keep going?”

“Aw, but, sir. I just love our time together. Why would I want to cancel on our weekly dates?”

“Alright, fine, your ass is mine for the next months, Ackles.”

“Like I really give a shit,” Ackles sighs and drops back into his chair.

“Ackles, just shut the fuck up,” Jared mumbles under his breath. “Quit while you’re behind.”

“Who the fuck asked you, jockstrap?”

Giving up, Jared turns back to the front of the room.

Morgan glances at the rest of them, his eyes landing on Misha at the back of the room.

“Hey, wake up!” he yells at him. “There will be no sleeping in detention.” Misha doesn’t stir.

Morgan picks up Danneel’s nail file.

“Hey!” she protests, but the teacher ignores her and throws it at Misha with deadly accuracy. 

It hits Misha on the head and he sits up, far too alert for someone who’d been dead to the world a second before. He stares at Morgan impassively.

“No sleeping,” Morgan reiterates. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Misha blinks and says nothing.

“Hello? Am I talking to myself here?”

“Misha doesn’t talk,” AJ says. “Not even in class.”

Morgan’s gaze flicks to AJ and then back to Misha. “Freak.” He turns and heads back to his office.

“See?” Danneel says, waving her arms. “Even the teachers think he’s weird.”

Misha throws her nail file back at her. It hits her smack on the forehead.

@@@

It’s been three hours when AJ pulls a notebook out of his backpack and opens it on the desk in front of him.

“Please tell me you are not going to do your homework,” Danneel says to him. She’s lying on the table, her head propped up on her purse, long legs crossed at the ankles, and Jared wonders absently if he would be able to see up her skirt if he was sitting on the other side of the room instead of behind her.

AJ shrugs. “Did all my homework. This isn’t homework.”

Danneel rolls her eyes. “That’s pathetic, even for you.”

“So what is it?” Ackles asks. “Your D&D notebook?” 

Jared grins at him. “You say that like you know what it is.”

Ackles glares, but he doesn’t argue.

AJ pulls a pencil from the spiral binding of the notebook and doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes as he starts writing. “It’s for a competition,” he says softly. “A short story. Winner gets their story published in the magazine and a new computer. Top of the range.”

Ackles narrows his eyes. “I’ve seen you running around being all geek-like with one of them new netbooks. What do you need with a new computer?”

AJ shrugs. “I didn’t say I needed it, I just said I was entering the competition.”

Jared tries his best to hide the blush that is slowly creeping across his face as he thinks about the entry form for the competition that is lying in his bag next to the dozen or more stories he’s written and rejected as his entry. Knowing that a brain box like AJ is entering too, he can’t help but feel that his odds of winning just got considerably less.

“What about you, jockstrap?” Ackles says. “You not entering?”

Jared looks up at him with wide eyes, then remembers where he is and turns his surprise into a scowl “Why would I wanna enter some dumb writing competition?”

Ackles stares at him for the longest time, like he’s considering something, then he shrugs and turns away. “No reason, man. Whatever.”

Jared can’t help but think he just missed something huge.

Suddenly, Ackles lunges to his feet, stretching his arms above his head, and Jared looks away.

“Okay, boys and girl, we’re going on a field trip.”

Even Misha looks up to stare at Ackles like he’s just grown a second head.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jared asks.

Danneel makes a face. “Um, has all that weird heavy metal music you listen to finally melted your brain?” 

Jensen blinks at her. “I don’t listen to heavy metal.”

Jared watches as Danneel rakes her eyes over Ackles’ clothes, torn jeans, biker boots, frayed plaid shirt open over a black wife beater, and feels embarrassed on his behalf.

The cheerleader rolls her eyes. “Sure you don’t. Anyway, we’re in detention, in case you missed it. We’re not supposed to leave the room.”

“And Mr. Morgan is right outside,” AJ reminds them.

Ackles looks at all four of them like they’ve just told him the sky was purple. “Seriously? You’d think this was your first time in detention.”

Jared exchanges a look with AJ and Danneel, and all three of them shrug.

“Christ,” Ackles says with a shake of his head. “Just follow me and don’t do anything stupid.”

He turns dramatically and makes his way towards the back of the library and the stacks that no one uses anymore.

Jared is surprised when Misha falls in behind him instantly, and he takes a second to wonder just how many times the two of them have done this. There’s an easy calmness between the two of them that screams of familiarity, and Jared is struck with the knowledge that they’d be friends, if either of them were in anyway normal enough to think that having friends was a good thing.

Jared waits for all of ten seconds before he heaves a sigh and gets to his feet. 

“Jared,” Danneel says, “you’re really going with them?”

“I’m hungry, Danni,” is the only excuse he gives her before he’s following after the two boys. He’s only taken a few steps before he hears the sound of a chair being pushed back and then AJ is following him.

“Well, I’m not staying here on my own!” Danneel yells at them, and Jared can here the scrape of her purse against the table before her heels are clicking on the tiled floor in her hurry to catch up to them.

Ackles and Misha are waiting for them at the back of the room, and Ackles has a slightly amused look on his face that Jared really doesn’t want to try to decipher right now.

“What took you so long?” he asks before he turns down the very last aisle, Misha quick on his heels.

“I would just like to point out that we are willingly following Jensen Ackles into the great unknown,” Danneel says in a stage whisper Jared is sure Ackles can hear. “This cannot be a good thing.” 

“It’s school, Danneel,” Jared says exasperatedly. “Hardly the great unknown.”

AJ shrugs. “Besides, what kind of trouble could he get into, really?”

Danneel levels a glare at him that would have had even Jared shuddering in his boots, and he is the quarterback of the football team. A nerd like AJ should never be able to withstand the torment.

But surprisingly, AJ doesn’t even flinch at the onslaught of such a lethal gaze. He just stares back blankly until Danneel sort of blinks, like she’s confused. 

Jared would laugh if he wasn’t sure she’d turn the full glare on him.

Instead, he walks around them in a wide circle, and follows Ackles and Misha down the aisle. There’s a door at the far end, propped open by an encyclopedia Jared’s fairly sure is older than he is. He’s careful to leave the book in place as he holds the door open for AJ and Danneel, and suddenly, they’re outside, standing in the sun in the middle of the quad. Jared looks up to see Ackles and Misha waiting for them next to the fountain.

Ackles looks impatient.

“This isn’t a fucking country stroll, you know,” he says, arms folded across his chest.

Jared shrugs. “You were the one who said we were going on a field trip.”

Ackles stares at him, like he wasn’t expecting anyone to answer back. Then he shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. “Whatever. I need to get something from my locker. This way.”

Jared smiles. Ackles’ locker is on the same row as his own and he’s seriously fucking starving. If he’d known Morgan was planning on keeping them locked up he would have made sure to bring his lunch to the library with him in his bag, not stick it in his locker like an idiot.

He hopes his sandwiches haven’t spoiled in the heat.

They walk silently through the quad to the far building, and Misha is fucking skipping next to him. Jared gives him a look out of the corner of his eye and not so subtly maneuvers himself so that AJ is between him and the crazy person.

Danneel giggles. “Now who thinks he’s weird?”

Jared throws her a look over his shoulder and Misha grins at her.

Ackles’ locker is at the end of the row, and he stops in front of it, like he doesn’t care if the others stop or not. He spins the dial, and Jared sticks his hands in the pockets of his jeans and rocks back on his heels and waits. It’s not like he really cares what Ackles needs out of his locker anyway.

“Um, why does it say ‘fag’ on the door of your locker?” AJ asks in a tentative voice, and Jared turns from where he was staring at his own locker longingly, so fast he’s pretty sure his neck cracks.

Sure enough, there, on the door of Ackles’ black locker, is the word, mocking him in silver spray paint.

Jared can see the way Ackles’ shoulders tense up as he stares at the lettering, before he pulls open the locker. “That was left by the previous tenant,” he says in a clipped tone that pretty much tells them not to mention it again on pain of death.

Jared passes this hallway every day. The graffiti wasn’t there the last time he looked, which, admittedly, was more than he liked to think about.

But he says nothing, there’s nothing really he can say without revealing more than he’s willing to these…virtual strangers, so he simply waits for Jensen to retrieve whatever it is he’s looking for. It’s not really any of his business anyway.

“Ew, seriously?” Danneel screeches in her high-pitched voice that mostly only dogs can hear. “You staged a jail break for cigarettes?”

Jensen slams the door closed and turns to face her, pulling a cigarette from the pack and sticking it between his lips. He cocks an eye brow at her as he flicks his lighter. “We all have our vices, sweetheart. Be grateful it’s only tobacco I’m smoking.”

Danneel’s mouth drops open on a gasp. She spins to face Jared, her hands flailing at nothing. “Jared!”

Jared frowns at her. “What? What the hell do you think I’m gonna be able to do about it? Do I look like I care whether or not he fills his lungs full of tar?”

Jared leaves Danneel to yell at Jensen, AJ trying to point out the drawbacks of smoking, and Misha grinning at all of them like they’re some kind of sideshow at a carnival, and walks the few yards down the hallway to his own locker.

He stares at the door of his locker for a few seconds, at the shiny black surface and the West Hills Devils sticker he’s pretty sure Danneel put there, and tries to imagine what he’d feel if he came into school one morning and found that word scrawled across the exterior.

He’s pretty sure he’d kill the nearest person. Or cry. Or vomit. It’s a tough situation to call, one he hopes he’ll never have to deal with.

Growling at himself under his breath, Jared pulls the door open without spinning the combination, ‘cause, really, you’d have to be battier than Misha to think about breaking into the star quarterback’s locker so he doesn’t bother locking it, and takes out the lunch he put there earlier.

His chocolate bars are a little squishy under his hands, and his soda is so warm he could probably take a shower in it, but other than that, it doesn’t seem to have fared too badly.

When he makes it back to Jensen’s locker, resolutely ignoring the graffiti in case his mouth lets him down and he does say something, there are only three people waiting for him.

“Where’s Misha?” he asks, looking around as if he’s hiding in the trashcan or something.

Danneel huffs. “He just, like, took off. Didn’t even say where he was going.”

“He never says anything,” AJ points out and Danneel huffs louder.

“So not the point.”

“Whatever,” Jensen says, making his way back out into the quad. “He knows the way back, we’ll leave the door open for him.”

“Leave the door open?” Danneel repeats. “What does that mean?”

Jensen turns until he’s walking backwards just so he can look at her like she’s brain dead. “Did you seriously just ask me that question?”

Danneel rolls her eyes. “I know Misha might not be the sharpest pencil in the box, but I’m pretty sure he knows how to open a door.”

“Not if the door can’t be opened from this side, Princess.”

Danneel stops in her tracks, causing AJ to crash into her. Jared simply side steps them both and continues until he’s next to Jensen.

“Um, you mean that’s why that book was on the floor?” Danneel mumbles, her face bright red. She sticks her thumb nail between her teeth.

Jensen’s eyes go comically wide. “Tell me you did not move the book?!”

Danneel cowers away, stumbling almost accidentally into AJ’s arms. “I didn’t know! I thought I’d better move it in case Morgan came in and saw the door open!”

“And you didn’t think that the first thing he’d notice was the five missing students?!” Jensen yells, advancing on her.

Jared grabs him by the bicep, holding him back. “Hey, calm down, man. It was an accident. She didn’t do it on purpose.”

“No,” AJ says softly, one arm around Danneel’s shoulders, “but the only other way back into the library is past Morgan’s office.”

Danneel whimpers and burrows deeper into AJ’s embrace.

“Perhaps if one of us was to utilize our ninja abilities and slink past Morgan’s office into the library and open the door from the inside, allowing the rest of us to re-enter the room, Morgan wouldn’t be any the wiser.”

All four of them pivot slowly to stare open mouthed at Misha, who is standing behind them nursing a take-away cup of coffee.

“Dude, you talked!” AJ exclaims.

“And you are even weirder than I thought you were,” Danneel adds.

Jensen narrows his eyes at him. “How much shit have you smoked today?”

Misha seems to consider this for a second before he shrugs and sips his coffee. “My mother made brownies last night. I had some for breakfast.”

“Brownies?” Danneel says, and seriously, did she turn into a parrot when Jared wasn’t looking?

“He means special brownies,” AJ elaborates.

“How are they special?”

Jensen scoffs and turns away to face Jared. “Seriously, you’re actually friends with this walking Barbie?”

Jared studies Danneel for a second. He knows she’s a smart girl; she’s top of their math class, just behind AJ if he’s not mistaken, but she doesn’t really know anything much about the world in general.

“They’re made with weed, Danni,” he spells out for her and she turns wide eyes to Misha.

“Are you stoned?!”

Misha nods. “Generally.”

“Look, we can all gripe about Misha’s questionable breakfast foods later,” Jensen almost yells at them, “but right now we have to figure out how to get back into the library without Morgan seeing us.” He grabs Jared by the wrist to look at his watch. “He’ll be doing rounds soon, we have maybe ten minutes.”

“Dude, how many times have you been in Saturday detention?” AJ asks, all wide-eyed and curious.

Jensen looks at him. “Beats hanging out at home getting yelled at by my dad. Which would be a good day.”

Jared chooses to ignore that for the minute and focuses on the problem at hand. “We’ve gotta get Morgan out of his office.”

Jensen takes a deep breath, like he’s trying to stop himself from yelling. “Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious, but we know that.”

“We could pull the fire alarm,” Danneel suggests, and Jensen shakes his head.

“No, big a dick as Morgan might be, he’s not a complete asshole. First thing he’d do is come check on us.” Jensen sighs and sort of…deflates. “We need a distraction.”

Jared furrows his brow. “Why am I suddenly thinking that you’re going to be the one fulfilling that role?”

Jensen quirks his eyebrow at Jared. “Because, jockstrap, out of the five of us, I’m the one with the least to lose if – when - I get caught.”

Jared sort of forgets how to think for a second, because Jensen Ackles is offering to do something for someone else, which just does not compute.

Jensen turns on his heel and jogs across the quad to the door they exited from and nods, mostly to himself, when he sees that it is, in fact, locked.

“Alright,” he says to them, not bothering to turn to face them, “you lot get out of sight and wait for Morgan to leave his office.”

“What are you gonna do?” Danneel asks, even as AJ tries to drag her behind the wall.

Jared can hear the smile in Jensen’s voice as he follows the others.

“Create a distraction.”

Jared decides to be the one to keep a look out, and therefore it’s him who locks gazes with Jensen when the other boy is making sure the four of them are out of sight. There’s something in Jensen’s eyes that Jared knows he’s not getting, but before he can do more than think about it, Jensen starts up his distraction.

He jumps into the fountain and starts to sing.

“When you’re tired and you’re beat and you worked all week, and you need a place you can let it go.”

Jared is amazed to find that Jensen has a nice voice, deep and smooth, and even though he doesn’t know the song, he can tell it’s one of Jensen’s favorites, just from the emotion he puts into the lyrics.

“Where the girls go out and the boys play hard, and you need a little more than just the radio.”

The door to the main building flies open and Jared ducks back behind the wall as Morgan storms out.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Ackles?!” he bellows, crossing the quad in four large strides.

Jensen just sings louder. “Well, here’s your open invitation, with just a couple regulations. Let me warn ya, son, only come to have fun. We don’t take kindly to serious.”

Jared peeks around the corner enough to see Morgan’s face turn bright red with anger. “Get out of the fountain, Ackles.”

“So leave your troubles at the door, ‘less you want some in here.”

There’s splashing and the sound of biker boots hitting the ground, and suddenly, Jensen’s running in the opposite direction, Morgan giving chase like they’re five year olds in a school yard.

Jared waits until they’ve turned the corner towards the gym before he steps out from their hiding place. “Come on, hurry up.”

“Such a brave little soldier,” Misha says as they shuffle towards the main building as quietly as they can. “Sacrificing himself for the good of others.”

Jared makes a noise in the back on his throat. “Yeah, who’da thunk it.”

He holds the door open for the other three to file past, and notes with vague amusement that Danneel is carrying her shoes in her hands.

“What? You try running in five inch heels.”

They make it back to the library without any complications, and they arrange themselves around the room again, trying to look comfortable and like they didn’t just sneak out the back door for an afternoon stroll.

Jared is staring at Danneel as she lies on her back on a table, her legs in the air resting against the wall, trying not to put voice to all the crud comments that are running through his head when the door opens and Morgan storms in.

“How did Ackles get out?” he asks, staring them down.

“Wait, what?” Danneel says, swinging her legs down and sitting up straight. “He’s not here?”

Jared hides his laugh behind a fist.

Morgan levels a glare at all four of them. “Lunch will be served in twenty minutes.”

“In here?!” AJ squawks. “Surely it would be better for us to eat in the cafeteria?”

“I’m not running the risk of anymore of you idiots deciding to take off when you’re supposed to be in detention. Lunch will be served in here.”  
Morgan turns to leave again.

“Sir?” Jared calls out after him. “Where is Jensen?” Jared blinks. He’s not sure when he started referring to Jensen as ‘Jensen’ and not ‘Ackles’ and he’s not sure what to make of the switch.

Morgan looks back over his shoulder. “Mr. Ackles will be in solitary confinement for the rest of the day.”

“Doesn’t he get any lunch?” Danneel asks with actual emotion, like she’s concerned about Jensen.

Morgan sniffs in disapproval. “Mr. Ackles is on a special diet and does not require lunch.”

“You can’t do that!” AJ yells, rising from his chair. “That’s practically child abuse.”

“Can it, or the rest of you won’t get fed either.”

AJ drops back into his seat and Morgan leaves the room without another word.

“Solitary confinement?” Jared asks once the door slams closed, and they all turn to look at Misha.

“Supply closet down the hall. He’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Jared laughs. “You guys do this a lot?”

Misha consider the question for a second before he shrugs. “Seventy-six percent of the time we’re in detention together results in Jensen being sent to solitary confinement. However, he does not like being alone much, and usually returns within minutes.”

Just as Misha finishes talking, a ceiling tile above Jared’s head moves, and he looks up in time to see Jensen’s biker boots swing into view, dripping water on the desk.

He drops down onto the table in front of Jared, and Jared looks up the long expanse of Jensen’s wet jeans and is treated to a view of the guy’s ass. The swallows quickly and turns away.

Misha giggles.

“When’s lunch?” Jensen asks as he drops to the floor with a dull thud.

“Morgan said he’d bring it by in twenty minutes,” Danneel answers.

Jensen nods. “Alright, I gotta keep outta sight.” He moves to the back of the room and sits down on the floor behind the desk Misha had been sitting at before their jailbreak. “It would be nice if you fuckers could join me when lunch gets here.”

Jared thinks about what Misha said, about Jensen not liking to be alone, and he wonders if there’s a story there, and what he can do to find out.

@@@

“So,” Jensen says an hour or so later. They’re all sitting on the floor behind the desk at the back of the room, Jared and Jensen leaning against the back wall, AJ and Danneel resting against the legs of the desk. Misha is lying on his back in the middle of the group. There are food wrappers and empty soda and water bottles scattered around them, but none of them make any sort of move towards clearing up.

“So…what?” Danneel asks when Jensen doesn’t say anything else.

“Well, we know why Texas Barbie here is in detention, and we know why I spend the majority of my time here, but what about the rest of you? What did the rest of you do to deserve this sort of punishment?”

Jared can feel the color drain from his face and he looks away from Jensen’s questing eyes to fiddle with a tear in the knee of his jeans he’s sure wasn’t there this morning.

No one else speaks up, though, and Jensen lets out a frustrated sigh. “Come on, we all did bad shit. Can’t be that bad.”

AJ makes a pained noise, and Jared looks over to see him curl in on himself, pulling his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, like he’s trying to make himself as small as possible.

Jensen snorts. “Come on, nerd-boy. Someone like you, I’m guessing you didn’t set fire to the chemistry lab.”

“No, only social rejects like you do that,” Danneel snaps, but her eyes are trained on AJ, like she truly wants to know.

AJ takes a deep breath. “I…I brought a gun to school.”

Misha bolts upright to stare at AJ, just like the rest of them.

“And the winner for biggest balls in the room goes to…” Jensen says, but his voice is full of some weird, uncertain tone, like he’s not sure what he should do with that information.

Jared can’t find anything to say, and neither can Misha, apparently, which isn’t all that surprising.

What is surprising is when Danneel swivels on her butt until she’s facing AJ head on, even if the boy is staring defiantly at his knees rather than face the eyes of the others in the room.

“AJ?” Danneel asks tentatively. “You wanna tell us why you brought a gun to school?”

AJ shrugs. “I dunno. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“What were you gonna do with it?” She’s inching closer to him until she’s pressed against his side, and Jared’s shocked to see the concern in her expression.

AJ snorts and suddenly it’s crystal clear what he was planning on doing with it.

“Why would you wanna go off yourself?” Jensen asks. “You, you’ve got your whole life laid out in front of you, your pick of colleges. The rest of your life is sealed, and you wanna go do something stupid like that?”

“Exactly, my whole life has been planned out for me since the day I was born. My parents have been pushing me towards an Ivy League school since I was in pre-school. They paid for tutors, gave me a reading list when I was eight. All my friends were out riding their bikes and falling outta trees, and I was holed up in my room reading books I couldn’t even understand.” AJ makes a frustrated noise and rakes his fingers through his hair. “I just sorta…got lost, you know? Too much academia and not enough fun. Everything else just didn’t seem important. Friends didn’t seem important. Girlfriends definitely didn’t seem important.” His eyes flick to Danneel and she gives him a soft smile. “I just kinda wanted it all to just…stop. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You have friends,” Jared says softly. “I’ve seen you hanging out with Travis and Milo.”

AJ shakes his head. “They’re not friends. Not really. They’re the other smart guys at school, the other nerds. No one else wants to hang out with us, so we hang out with each other.” He looks at each one of them in turn. “Truth is, I think you guys are more my friends than they are.”

Jensen lets out a bitter laugh. “Trust me; no one wants to be my friend.”

AJ gives him a hard look. “I was your friend once.”

Jensen swallows hard and looks away. “That was a long time ago, AJ.”

Jared looks between the both of them, like the explanation of their words would just appear in the air. “What the hell are the two of you talking about?”

A soft smile twists AJ’s face and he looks down at where Danneel has curled up next to him. “Jensen used to be on the honor roll. He was the smartest kid in school.”

All eyes shift to Jensen, and there’s a pretty red blush coloring his face as he sighs.

“I’m gonna bet no one in this room, apart from AJ, even remembers me before sophomore year.”

Jared frowns. He’s not sure exactly when he became aware of Jensen, he just knows his awareness had nothing to do with how good Jensen’s grades were.

“AJ’s right,” Jensen went on when no one says anything. “I was on the honor roll, AP classes, all that shit.” He smirks at AJ. “And I’m still the smartest kid in school. I just don’t hand in my assignments or try so hard on the tests and pop quizzes.”

“Why’d you stop trying?” Misha asks. He’s returned to his spot on the floor, his head twisted at an awkward angle so that he can still see Jensen clearly.

Jensen shrugs. “Things started to get pretty shit at home around freshman year. They were always sorta bad, but then it just got worse. My mom and dad were fighting all the time and I kept getting caught in the middle. There was never any time when they weren’t screaming at each other, and my grades slipped ‘cause I couldn’t concentrate. Just before summer vacation, my mom upped and left. Never said anything, not goodbye, or see ya around. I just came home one day and she was gone. My dad blamed me. He said that everything was fine, and then I came along and everything changed, my mom wasn’t the same or something.” Jensen let out a soft, humorless laugh. “He said he wished I was never born, ‘cause then my mom would still be there and he wouldn’t be stuck looking after some waste of space loser like me.”

“Shit, Jensen,” Jared breathes, not really knowing what he should say and fighting the urge to close the distance between them and wrap his arms around the older boy.

“I thought he’d be proud of me, you know? I was taking college classes, my freshman year and I was taking college level classes, but he just said he didn’t have time for a fag like me. He thought, just because I was into books and did well at school, that that made me gay. So I pulled back, dropped off the honor roll pretty quick and made myself into what you see before you.” He smiles. “Didn’t make a blind bit of difference, though. My dad had already made up his mind. I was a fag and he would beat it outta me.” He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “Didn’t work though. That’s why I’m always here. I do just enough shit to get me into detention, but not enough to get me expelled. I need school, need somewhere to go.”

“So, that word on you locker?” Danneel asks quietly.

Jensen snorts. “That’s all down to your buddy, Chad. He saw me coming out of a gay bar last weekend.”

Jared blinks. “What were you doing in a gay bar?”

Jensen looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “Exactly the same thing other people do in a gay bar.”

Jensen was gay? Jared feels himself start to hyperventilate at the implications of Jensen’s sexuality.

“Oh,” Danneel says, shock and confusion coloring her tone.

AJ just rolls his eyes, like it’s old news.

Jensen laughs. “Fuck, I can’t believe I just came out to a bunch of people I don’t even know.” He turns to look at Jared. “You gonna go and tell your buddies that you spent time with the school fag? They’ll think you’ve caught something from being so close to me.”

Jared scowls at him. “We’re not all homophobic assholes, you know.”

“Yeah? That why you did what you did to Justin Hartley?”

Jared feels sick. Jensen knows what he did, why he’s in detention. He wants to run screaming from the room.

“Jared?” Danneel asks. “What did you do to Justin?”

A tear slides down Jared’s face, but he makes no move to wipe it away. It was pretty much common knowledge that Justin was gay, he didn’t make any attempt to hide it and he dealt with whatever shit came his way. But when Chad and Tom and some of the other football team members caught Jared and Justin talking behind the bleachers after a game, they’d been less than impressed.

They ignored Jared’s protests that they were discussing a history assignment, which was true, and told him that he had to prove which side of the fence he was on.

After he did what they asked him to do, Jared went home and emptied the contents of his stomach onto the floor of the hallway, then cried in his momma’s arms for hours. He’d never felt so pathetic in his life.

“I didn’t want to do it,” he whispers to the room, his tears coming harder.

“What did you do?” Danneel repeats.

“I beat Justin up pretty bad, left him in the bottom of the showers, miserable and alone. I wrote…that word on his chest.” Jared’s breath hitches and he can’t carrying on, he’s crying so hard. “I swear I didn’t want to do it. I hated every second of it.”

“Then why did you?” Misha asks.

It takes Jared a while to answer, for him to get his breathing under control enough for them to be able to understand what he’s saying when he answers.

“Because I didn’t want them to find out…” he trails off, not ready to say the words, to put them out there in a room full of people he doesn’t know very well. A room full of people who have been more like friends to him in just a few hours than Chad has been the entire time Jared has known him.

“Find out what?” Danneel presses.

Jared takes a deep breath, stares at his shoes as he says the words, puts it out there for these four strangers to mock. “I didn’t want them to find out I was gay.”

There’s silence in the room, the ticking of the clock loud in Jared’s ears, and he keeps his eyes trained on his hands where they’re clenched into tight fists in his lap.

“Does your family know?” AJ asks carefully, almost like he doesn’t want to say the words in case Jared says something that would only make the situation worse.

Jared nods his head, moves to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “I told them when I was sixteen, when I realized the person I wanted to date wasn’t a girl.”

Danneel sits up a little, but Jared notices she doesn’t move away from AJ’s space, and a smile fights its way across his lips as he sees how comfortable they look with each other.

“Why would you think you had to hide that? It’s who you are.”

Jared scoffs. “Jesus, Danni, can’t you see why? Look at what they did to Jensen’s locker, what they made me do to Justin.” He holds up a hand when Misha looks like he’s going to protest. “Yes, I know I did that, the blame there is all on me. But don’t sit there and think that it wouldn’t have happened anyway. Chad, the way he talks about it, like it’s a disease that needs to be wiped out. How the hell do you think he, and everybody else, is gonna react when the star quarter back of the football team turns out to be a flaming homo?”

Next to him, Jensen snorts. “I wouldn’t exactly call you ‘flaming’, man.”

Jared thumps his head back against the wall. “You know what I mean.”

Danneel pushes away from AJ and crawls across the space between them until she’s sitting on her heels in front of Jared. “Don’t you get it? How many closeted people are in this school? Afraid to come out because of what Chad and his band of Neanderthals might do to them? If you came out, God, if you showed them that someone like you, or Jensen, is just like them, Chad would lose all his power, he’d be nothing.”

Fresh tears spring to Jared’s eyes at her words and he imagines what it would be like, to walk down the hallways with his head held high, to be himself for the first time.

She puts her hands on his knees. “Okay, so maybe you’d lose some friends, but maybe you won’t. Maybe when they see that being gay isn’t a bad thing, that it doesn’t change who a person is, they’ll realize how stupid and bigoted they’ve been.”

“Are you just gonna stay in the closet forever?” AJ wonders. “Just because your friends don’t agree with it, you’re just gonna be miserable and alone for the rest of your life?” He gives Jared a knowing look. 

“Besides,” Misha says, gazing at the ceiling, “do you really want to be friends with people who think like that? Who would hurt someone just because the person they love just happens to be the same sex they are?”

Jared swallows and looks at each one of them in turn, his eyes settling on Jensen, and realizes that they’re right.

But before he can say that, Danneel carries on.

“And anyway, don’t you want to get yourself a cute little boyfriend to parade around with?” she shrugs one elegant shoulder. “I think Justin might be off the menu, but there are probably a lot of other gay guys at school who are just waiting for the star quarter back to come and sweep them off their feet.”

Jared laughs, but he can feel the hot blush spread across his cheeks and he looks away.

“Oh, my god, there already is somebody!” she squeaks.

Jared shakes his head. “No, no, there’s…it’s not like that.”

“But there’s someone you like? Is he at school?”

Jared nods. “Yeah, he’s…I’ve liked him for a long time, but I don’t even think he knows I exist.”

“You’re Jared Padalecki; of course he knows who you are.”

“No, he knows the face I put out there. He doesn't know me.”

Danneel looks at him a little sadly. “That’s because even you don’t know you.”

And really, what could Jared say to argue that?

It’s quiet for a while, before Jensen reaches out with his biker boot and nudges Misha in the side.

“So, Collins, why are you in detention? Smoking weed in class again?”

Misha shrugs and lays back, his eyes closed and his hands behind his head.

“Nope. I was just bored.”

@@@

Jared sits on a desk at the front of the room and watches AJ and Danneel. They’re sitting on the floor their backs against the wall, their sides pressed close together as they whisper to each other and Jared can’t help the smile that flicks across his face at the sight of them.

The day hadn’t turned out exactly like he’d expected it too, but maybe, he decides, that’s a good thing. 

He wonders what his life would have been like if he’d had the balls to come out publicly when he’d told his family, if he’d be where he is right now if everyone knew he wanted to shove a certain boy up against the wall right now and kiss him senseless.

Misha lets out another snore from where’s he’s lying face down on the desk next to Jared and he lets out a laugh that’s nothing more than a puff of air.

The people in this room, he knows nothing about them, yet they’d become better friends to him in the last eight hours than any of the guys on the football team had been in the last four years. He knows things about these people that no one knows, and he in turn has divulged things about himself that he vowed never to tell a living soul.

He can’t help but feel nervous about what’s going to happen at three o’clock when they have to leave their little bubble behind them. Getting sent to Saturday detention every week just so that they can hang out doesn’t seem to be all that advisable.

Jensen appears in front of Jared’s face and he jumps back a little, startled.

“I have to return to my prison cell before Morgan knows I’m gone,” Jensen utters quietly, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. “Detention’s over soon, so…” He’s looking everywhere but at Jared and Jared sighs and figures maybe not everyone is as comfortable around these people as he has come to be.

“Right, sorry,” he mumbles as he jumps down from the desk to allow Jensen to climb up and reach the ceiling tile he’d moved to gain access to the room from above.

“Um,” Jensen flushes red, scratches at the back of his neck. “You wanna maybe…” he trails off with a laugh. “I was gonna say ‘walk me there’, but we’re crawling, so that doesn’t really make much sense.”

Jared blinks. “You want me to…go with you?” He doesn’t really understand what’s going on, but he’s not about to say no.

Jensen looks over his shoulder at the other three people still in the room, but none of them are paying any attention. “Just…kinda wanna talk, alright?” he says gruffly. “And not here, where people like Misha can eavesdrop.”

“I was not eavesdropping,” Misha replies, his face still smashed against the desktop.

Jared blinks at him. “Do you actually sleep when you do that, or is this some covert op you’ve got going on?”

“I plead the fifth.”

“Jared,” Jensen snaps, impatient.

“Right, sorry. Yeah, I’ll go with you.”

Jensen doesn’t say anything else, just climbs up onto the desk and boosts himself through the hole in the ceiling, apparently trusting Jared to follow him.

Jared doesn’t say anything to the others, or look at them as he trails after Jensen, climbing into the ceiling cavity and following Jensen’s path back to the supply closet he’d been confined to.

Jensen’s pacing the length of the admittedly small room when Jared drops to the floor, and he frowns at him.

“Jensen, what’s going on?”

“Jared Tristan Padalecki,” Jensen simply states, ignoring Jared completely. “Birthday July 19th. Mom Sharon, dad Gerald, older brother Jeff, younger sister Megan. Your favorite subject is English, you’re a damn good writer, and you fucking hate football.”

Jared falls down onto a stack of books sitting conveniently in the corner and stares up at Jensen with wide eyes. “Um…wow. Okay.” He furrows his brow, trying to think of something to say that doesn’t make him sound like a moron.

“You say this guy you like knows nothing about you, and that’s just shit, man.” Jensen runs a hand through his hair and looks at Jared out of the corner of his eye. “The guy you wanna be with, he’s gotta know everything he can about you, whether he talks to you every day or not. You seriously wanna be with some guy who doesn’t give a shit if you live or die?”

Jared grins up at him. “You saying I should be with you?”

Jensen blushes furiously. “I didn’t say that. I just said that you should be with someone who cares about you. Not someone who ignores you every day.”

“You’ve done a pretty good job of that for the last four years,” Jared tells him, and he knows that this is it, this is when the truth comes out, whether he wants it to or not.

Jensen stops his pacing and turns to stare at him. “What are you talking about?”

Jared waves a hand in the air, as if that answers everything. “You’re standing here telling me you know all this shit about me, yet you’ve never spoken a single word to me before today.”

“Same thing could be said about you, ‘cept you don’t know anything about me.”

Jared huffs a breath. “Fine. I don’t know anything about you, past that your middle name is Ross and your birthday’s March 1st, and the fact that your eyes are green and you have glasses but you don’t wear them to school, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see you every day, don’t notice you.”

Jensen frowns at him. “Make sense, man, ‘cause I’m sorta standing out on a limb here.”

Jared takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “The guy I was talking about in there? He was the reason I realized I was gay, because I was daydreaming about him, and fantasizing about him instead of Danni or one of the other cheerleaders.”

“That’s really awesome, man, I’m glad you had someone to help you figure it out,” Jensen deadpans.

“He was you, jackass.”

Jensen stops, just freezes in the middle of the room, staring at nothing as Jared’s words hang in the air.

Jared drops his face into his hands. “Shit,” he breathes. “This was so not what I imagined doing today”

Jensen snorts. “Yeah, it wasn’t exactly on my to-do list either.”

Jared looks up at him. “How do you know so much about me? No one knows I hate football.”

Jensen lets out a frustrated noise. “It’s fucking obvious, man. Anyone who’s really looking can see it all over your face every time you run onto that field.”

Jared smiles. “You watch my games? You watch…me?”

Jensen blush deepens and he doesn’t look at Jared, just continues to pace the room.

Jared clears his throat and climbs back to his feet. “I’ve never done this, you know.”

Jensen flicks his eyes to him, but looks away quickly. “Never done what?”

“There’s never been another guy that I actually thought I stood a chance with. I’ve been so scared of everyone finding out about me that I never really thought about…boyfriends.” Jared laughs. “I definitely never thought I ever stood a chance with you.”

Jensen whirls around to glare at him. “What? So, you think ‘cause we’re both batting for the home team that that means we should hook up?”

Jared’s mouth drops open in shock. “What the fuck? You just stood there and told me that you’ve been watching me. You know more about me than my fucking best friends do.”

“That doesn’t mean I like you.”

“Oh? Then what does it mean? ‘Cause seriously, I am lost right now.”

“It means I have eyes, jerk. Just like everyone else at this school.”

“So everyone else knows I hate football? Or how much I love writing?” Jared blinks. “That’s why you asked me earlier if I was gonna enter that competition AJ was talking about, ‘cause you knew how much I liked writing stories.”

Jensen chewed on his thumbnail. “I’ve read a lot of your stuff. It’s fucking awesome.”

Jared shakes his head. “I don’t even want to know how you managed that.”

“Yeah, you probably don’t.”

They’re silent for a while, each of them standing on one side of the supply closet, their gazes fixed firmly on anything but each other.

Jared wants to make that move, to be the one to crowd Jensen against the wall and kiss him stupid. But this isn’t some dream this time, and God if he hasn’t had this dream over and over. This is real, this has potential, and Jared isn’t going to wake up just as his lips touch Jensen’s, because Jensen is really here, and this is really happening, and Jared is terrified.

“Then fucking shut up and kiss me,” Jensen says, crowding in close and Jared has less than a second to realize that he said that last part out loud before Jensen’s hand is behind his neck and Jensen’s lips are pressing against his own and they’re kissing.

Jared has kissed a few girls in his time, to save face in front of his buddies. He even kissed Danneel once in a random game of spin the bottle.

But kissing Jensen? It’s like nothing he’s ever experienced. It’s better than all those times he’s sat in history, the only class he shares with Jensen, imaging kissing him, touching him. His mind never would have been able to come up with the sheer perfection it is to have Jensen pressed up close to him, his arms around Jared’s neck, one hand buried in his hair.

Jared’s hands are on Jensen’s hips, his thumbs brushing the waistband of his still-wet jeans, the slightest hint of smooth skin.

“Wow,” Jared breathes when Jensen pulls away, rest his forehead against Jared’s.

Jensen smiles. “I forgot what it felt like to kiss someone you’re actually into.” He kisses Jared again, just a soft press of lips.

Jared’s sure the grin that splits his face looks ridiculous and sappy, but he can’t seem to shake it.

Jensen rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling too, so Jared thinks Jensen can’t think he’s that lame. He puts a hand to Jensen’s jaw and pulls him in close again, brushes his lips over Jensen’s jaw, down his throat, loving the rash of stubble he feels as he sucks a mark into the skin just below Jensen’s ear.

“Christ,” Jensen says, and his voice is nothing more than a breathy whisper. “I thought you said you’ve never done this?”

“I haven’t. Doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about doing it, oh, fifty times a day.”

Jensen stumbles back a little until he’s pressed up against the wall, his breathing short. “Thought about it a lot, huh? Your huge hands all over some guy, making them do whatever you want them to?”

Jared shakes his head. “Not some guy. You. It’s always been you.”

Jensen moans as Jared presses a leg between Jensen’s thighs, and he can feel the hardness there, and Jared feels his own erection pressing against his zipper.

Jensen’s hands are suddenly on his ass, and he’s grinding down, thrusting against Jared and Jared knows he’s not going to last long. 

Jared’s mouth finds its way back to Jensen’s, although they’re not so much kissing now as sharing air as they grind alongside each other, moans and grunts and names whispered into each other’s mouths.

Jensen comes first, much to Jared’s surprise, but the way Jensen’s fingers dig into his ass, the way his name rolls off Jensen’s tongue as he comes is enough to push Jared over the edge, and one more thrust and he’s creaming the inside of his boxers like some kid.

Jensen starts laughing and Jared pulls back sharply, feeling confused and worried and upset all at once, but Jensen just pulls him in for another deep kiss, his tongue thrusting into Jared’s mouth.

“I cannot believe,” Jensen mumbles against his lips, “that I just came in my jeans with you. I always thought, if I ever got this far with you, it’d be better than a quick fumble in a supply closet at school.”

Jared relaxes and leans back into Jensen’s embrace. “Next time we’ll do it right.”

Jensen cocks an eyebrow at him. “Next time, huh?”

“Oh, there will definitely be a next time, man.”

The smile Jensen gives him is sweet and innocent and Jared knows that if he wasn’t screwed over Jensen before, he most definitely is now.

They kiss again, soft and sweet, before Jensen pushes him gently towards the hole he made in the ceiling.

“You gotta get going, man, before Morgan catches you in here with me and figures out what we’ve been up to.”

Jared laughs. “Something tells me he’ll be more pissed at the fact that I got in here in the first place than what we were doing.”

“You might have a point,” Jensen concedes.

Jared brushes their lips together one last time before he boosts himself back through the hole in the ceiling and follows the light from the hole the missing tile left in the ceiling of the library until he can swing his legs around and drop through the hole to the desk below, fixing the tile back in place.

He grimaces at the stickiness in his boxers and sighs when he realizes he’s still got almost another hour left before he can get home and change.

When he drops back to the floor, Jared realizes everyone is staring at him.

“What?”

“Oh, my God!” Danneel screeches. “You just had sex in a supply closest!”

“I did not!”

AJ and Misha laugh. 

“The stain on the front of your jeans suggests otherwise,” Misha says, his eyes sparkling.

Jared looks down, and sure enough, the front of his jeans are stained dark.

“Son of a bitch,” he grips as he sits in a chair.

“So, you and Jensen, huh?” AJ says with a smirk.

“Is he the guy you were talking about?” Danneel asks.

“Fucking better be,” Misha grunts and Jared smiles.

“Yeah, he’s the guy.”

 

@@@

 

They’re standing in the middle of the parking lot next to Jared’s truck, AJ’s arm around Danneel’s shoulders, Jared and Jensen standing so close together there’s no air between them, Misha with his hands behind his head as he looks up, staring at the sky.

“What happens on Monday?” Danneel ponders, her voice tiny and small, like she’s scared of the answer.

Jared looks at Jensen, gazes into his brilliant green eyes, and gives the only answer he knows.

He shrugs. “I have no idea.”

“Guess we’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it,” Misha adds.

“High school sucks,” AJ decides for them. “We wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation if we were in college.”

“We also wouldn’t be in detention,” Jensen reminds them.

“I don’t want to go back to the way things were,” Danneel tells them, her eyes glassy.

Jared sighs. “I guess that’s up to us.”

Danneel sniffs and turns away, AJ walking her to her car before he climbs onto his Vespa and sputters away.

Misha gives them a mock salute as he turns to walk away across the football field.

“You want a ride home?” Jared asks when they’ve been silent for too long, and Jensen just snorts and rolls his eyes.

Jared bites on his lower lip for a second before he finds the courage to ask his next question.

“You wanna come hang out at mine?”

“Thought you’d be grounded.”

Jared smiles at his…well, he doesn’t really know what Jensen is yet, but he smiles anyway. “Somehow, I think they’ll make an exception for you.”

@@@

Monday

There’s an empty table in the middle of the cafeteria, an island in the sea of students and faculty.

Jared decides that it’s mocking them.

He can see the others standing awkwardly around the room. Danneel hugging her binder to her chest as her eyes flit back and forth between the empty table, the other cheerleaders, and AJ, who’s standing just beyond the lunch line, his tray balanced on one arm.

Misha is leaning against the window sill on the other side of the room, his eyes locked on the empty table, like he’ll kill anyone who tries to claim it.

And Jensen…Jensen is just behind Jared, waiting for him to make a move. Jared can feel the weight of Jensen’s gaze on him and he wonders how he never noticed it before, this intense feeling he gets when he knows Jensen’s eyes are on him. He felt it enough over the weekend Jensen spent at his house, making himself at home and charming Jared’s momma so well that Jared would think it was an act if he couldn’t see the sincerity in the other boy’s expression.

It’s like each of them is frozen to the spot, waiting for another to make the first move, to decide what action they’ll take and if they’ll risk everything they’ve built up during their four years at West Hills High School.

In the end, it’s Danneel who makes the decision for them, sighing loud enough to be heard over the din of the other students. She marches to the table and drops her bag and binder down noisily, standing next to the table with one hand on her hip as she arches an eyebrow and glares at each of the boys in turn.

AJ is the first to break into motion, hurrying to cross the cafeteria and take a seat next to her; like he’s afraid one of the others would dare to sit beside her if he doesn’t get there first.

Jared can almost hear Misha’s laughter, watches him push away from the window sill and walk calmly to the table. He forgoes the bench seat, and instead sits comfortably in the middle of the table, his legs folded beneath him.

Instead of moving forward, Jared turns around to face Jensen, catching sight of him sitting on the bottom step of the stairs.

He spread his arms wide. “Well, come on then! Let’s go change history!”

Jensen laughs as he gets to his feet and Jared walks backwards for a few steps, making sure Jensen is really following him.

He flops down onto the bench seat across from AJ and can’t help the grin that splits his face when Jensen settles next to him.

“I cannot believe I am the only one to come out of this weekend without a significant other on my arm,” Misha laments, leaning over to steal one of AJ’s fries.

“Yeah, but, see, you’re a little weird, Misha,” Jensen points out. “I’m not sure anyone is ready to date you.”

Misha thinks about the statement for a second before he gives a nod of his head. “This is true.”

“So, is everybody ready for the righteous indignation this causes?” Danneel asks as she pulls her lunch from her bag. “The masses are already becoming aware.” She’s looking over Jared’s right shoulder, and none of them have to look to know that the football team is glaring at them.

Jared shrugs. “Let ‘em talk. Any of you wanna quit and go back to the way things were?”

“Nope,” AJ states simply, taking a bite of his burger, and no one moves to disagree.

Jared takes a deep breath. “Alright then, I got an announcement. Something else that’s only gonna serve to piss them off.”

Misha looks from Jensen to Jared and back again. “You haven’t knocked him up already, have you?”

Jensen shoves at his arm, causing him to lose his balance and fall against Danneel. 

She merely giggles and straightens him up. “What’s your news, Jay?”

“I quit the football team this morning.”

“ No shit!” AJ says loudly. 

“Yes shit.”

“Wow,” Danneel says calmly. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yeah, I mean, I kinda only joined the team ‘cause everyone else was, and then I found out I was good at it, so I just sorta stuck with it, ‘cause I didn’t have anything better to do. And now…” he shrugs. “Well, now, I’ve kinda decided to stop following everyone around like I can’t think for myself. I’ve done it for far too long, and now I think it’s time for me to do something that I want, not because everyone else expects it of me.” He bumps his shoulder into Jensen and is rewarded with a blinding grin.

“Be the shepherd, not the sheep, huh, Jay?”

Jared nods. “Exactly.”

Jensen clears his throat and sits up a little straighter. “Well, since we’re confessing and all, and starting down our own paths, I guess I got something to say, too.”

Misha opens his mouth, but Danneel clamps her hand across his mouth before he can anything. 

“Please, Misha, it doesn’t need to be said again.”

Misha pushes her hand away. “Girl, don’t be thinking you can just push me around now that we’re friends. You got AJ for that.”

Danneel rolls her eyes, but there’s a slight blush staining her pretty face. “Please, all of you boys are mine now. I am the queen of this little domain.”

Jared stares at her, his mouth hanging open. “I really wish she was joking about that.”

Danneel winks at him.

Jared shakes himself and turns a little on the bench to face Jensen. “So, what’s this news?”

Jensen’s face is red and he’s staring at the table top, not meeting anyone’s gaze. “I’m thinking about maybe trying to pull my grades up. I know I’ll never make it back to where I was, not in my senior year. But I figure, if I can get my GPA up a little, I can maybe get myself into a decent college and out from under my daddy.”

Jared beams at him. “Jen, that’s great. Seriously.”

“Yeah,” AJ nods. “We can help you, tutoring, whatever you need. Danneel’s pretty good at math, you know.”

Jensen laughs. “Yeah, so I heard.”

Jared reaches an arm around Jensen to rest his hand on his opposite hip and leans into him a little more. “Proud of you.”

Jensen turns an open, happy face to him. “Yeah, I’m proud of you, too.”

“What the hell is this? Some sort of community outreach program?”

Jared looks up to see Chad, Tom and some of the other football players standing at the end of their table. Beyond them, Sandy and a few other cheerleaders are watching the events unfold with a mixture of confusion, distain and sheer annoyance on their pretty made-up faces.

Jared sighs and digs his lunch out of his paper sack. “Fuck off, Chad. We’re having lunch here.”

“Yeah, it’s the ‘here’ that I’m worried about, Jared,” Chad says. “Our table is over there. Need me to draw you a map?”

“Get lost, Chad,” Danneel says from the other side of the table. “No one cares about your scare tactics right now, so why don’t you go bother someone who gives a shit?”

“I give a shit about this,” Chad says, indicating the table. He turns a dark gaze to Jared. “Something’ll have to be done about this.”

“And what exactly does that mean?” Jared asks, looking up at Chad. His eyes flick to Tom standing just behind him, and he notes the smug expression on the other boy’s face. “And what’s got you looking so fucking pleased with yourself?”

Tom’s smirk grows and he folds his arms across his chest. “I’m the new starting quarter back. I guess coach was very impressed with your little…display of feelings.”

A muscle ticks in Jared’s jaw and he makes a move to stand, but Jensen’s hand on his thigh, warm and reassuring and there, makes him stop.

“Why would Jared care about you being the new QB?” Danneel asks before Jared can think of anything to say. “He quit the team, moron.”

Chad looks at him, shock in his eyes. “You quit the team? Why would you do that?”

Jared sighs. “Maybe I’m just tired of doing what people expect of me. Maybe for once I wanna be my own person, be my real self.”

Chad snorts and glares at him. “I wish I’d known before now that your real self was a fucking fag. I wouldn’t have wasted my time with you.”

Jared stands up so fast the whole table moves and he’s standing at his full height before Chad, looking down at him with anger pulsing through his veins.

“If I ever hear you that word coming out of your mouth again, I swear to God, you’ll be breathing out of a tube for a month.”

Chad smirks up at him. “Oh, yeah? You and what army?”

“This one.”

Jared doesn’t need to look to know that Jensen is standing now, too, at his side, like it’s the place where he belongs. Without taking his eyes away from Chad, he can hear Misha jumping down off the table, Danneel and AJ slowly getting to their feet.

The red head pushes herself between Jared and the football players, one hand on Jared’s chest. 

“Come on now, Chad. Do you really want this to go down in the middle of the cafeteria, where everyone’s watching?”

Jared glances around, only now realizing that the whole room has gone silent, all eyes on them.

“Like I can’t take a fucking fag and his fucking pansy ass bitch,” Chad sneers.

Danneel’s hand falls. “You know what, Jay? He’s all yours.” She steps back and Jared draws back his hand and punches Chad square in the mouth.

“Son of a bitch!” Chad yells as he sprawls on his ass on the floor. He surges back to his feet and aims his fist at Jared’s jaw, but Jared sees it coming and ducks easily before he retaliates with a hard left hook. Chad falls back to the floor.

Jared looks away from him, to where Jensen is holding Tom back, but the other football players are just standing watching the show, confusion and torn loyalty clear on their faces.

Jared grins. “Well, would you look at that?” he says to the crowd of observers. “Chad and Tom just got their asses handed to them by a couple o’ queers.”

There’s laughter around the room, and Chad turns a furious shade of red as he scrambles back to his feet.

“You fucking bastard, you’ll pay for this.”

“Pay for what?” AJ asks. “The fact that he defended himself from a hate crime?”

“A what?!” Chad exclaims.

Misha sidles up next to Jared, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. “Well, you’ve just, very publicly, admitted to the fact that you find Jared’s sexuality to be disgusting to you, and very loudly told him that you’d beat him for having the audacity to be gay. There are a lot of witnesses in this room, Chad, and we’d have no problem standing by Jared, and Jensen, if they decided to follow up on this matter.”

“Oh, yeah? And what about Jared and what he did to Justin? Think anyone’s gonna buy his story when they find out he’s guilty of his own hate crime?”

“Well, you can’t exactly call it a hate crime if you beat someone up for being gay if you’re gay yourself.” The crowd parts and Jared looks over to see Justin walking towards them, a serene smile on his face. He shrugs. “Besides, everyone knows that Jared and I weren’t fighting because of that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Chad spits. “And just what exactly where you fighting about?”

“I made a play for Jensen,” Justin says calmly, the lie rolling easily off his tongue. “Jared put me in my place.”

Danneel stifles laugh as no one moves to correct Justin.

Chad’s face grows an even deeper shade of red, and he bites his tongue.

Jared knows his former friend can’t say anything without incriminating himself in the act that sent Jared to Saturday detention, but it doesn’t stop him from glaring at the five of them, six including Justin, with daggers in his eyes.

“I hope you and your little fag are very happy together,” Chad throws at them.

Jared watches Justin’s eyes harden. “Don’t make me do something I might regret, Murray.”

“Like what?”

Justin cocks his head. “I’ve heard that you’re pinning your hopes on a football scholarship. I’d hate to see what a bad article in the school newspaper would do to that dream. Colleges look at things like that, you know.”

Chad looks at each of them in turn before he backs away, turning to flee the room, Tom and the rest of the players hot on his heels.

The other students return back to their lunches, now that the drama is over, and Jared takes a deep breath. He turns to Justin, to thank him, but his eyes settle on the multitude of bruises covering his face. He feels sick, bile rising in the back of his throat.

“Oh, God…Justin.” He staggers back, and Jensen’s there, one hand on his arm, the other slipping around his waist.

“Come on, Jay, breathe,” he whispers in Jared’s ear. “Everything’s okay, just breathe, baby.”

It’s the pet name that has Jared sucking in a large gulp of air, something Jensen had stumbled into during the time he spent at Jared’s house over the weekend, and Jared doesn’t even feel the need to be embarrassed about it.

He allows Jensen to lead him back to the table and he sits down on the bench as Jensen straddles it, slides close with one hand resting on the back of Jared’s neck.

“I’m so sorry, Justin,” Jared murmurs, his eyes on the table top. He hears AJ shifting down on the bench, closer to Danneel, to let Justin to slide in next to him.

“I know you are, Jared,” Justin says, something like acceptance in his voice. “And I also know why you did what you did.”

Jared glances up at that, but the bruises on Justin’s face, bruises that he caused, just make him even more nauseous and he has to look away. Jensen’s free hand is resting on the table, and Jared takes it in his own hands, focuses his attention on that as he speaks to Justin.

“You do? How?”

Justin laughs. “I have an awesome gaydar, man. I had you two figured out years ago.”

“Shit,” Jensen breathes, but there’s a smile on his lips. “And here I thought I was being subtle.”

“Why didn’t you stop me?” Jared asks quietly. It’s something that he’s been wondering about for the last few days, ever since that day in the boys showers and he still hasn’t been able to come up with an answer. Because Justin is not a small guy, and while he doesn’t have the bulk Jared’s built up thanks to years of football, he could have easily fought back enough to give as good as he got.

He can see Justin shrug. “Like I said, I knew why you did it; I knew you were so deep in the closet that Aslan was a personal friend.” The whole table laughs. “And that Chad probably put you up to it. But I also knew that when the truth of what you did hit you, that you’d do something like this, stand up to Chad, come out and be proud of who you are. It was just a matter of time.” Justin sighs. “That’s why I never went to Kripke. It wasn’t me who ratted you out. I had this whole plan to talk to you about it, help you understand, but someone took matters into their own hands.”

“Do you know who did it?” Jensen asks, and Jared squeezes his hand, because he knows that his boyfriend is probably planning something.

Hee. Boyfriend.

He can sense Justin shaking his head. “No, I’ve no idea. When I wouldn’t talk, they had no evidence of it, apart from you confessing. Probably why you weren’t suspended.”

Jared nods. He knows this. His father had screamed it at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

Justin waves a hand. “I’m just pleased my little theory panned out and you two came back from Narnia.” Another laugh ripples across the table. 

“Did I fool anyone?” Jensen sulks.

“I didn't know,” Danneel says lightly.

“I did,” AJ adds. 

“Might have helped if you two had been seen dating a girl once in a while,” Misha says with a shrug. He picks up AJ’s burger and looks at it closely before taking a bite.

“Hey!” AJ exclaims.

Misha hands the burger back.

“I see you guys have bonded. When did this happen?” Justin asks, gazing at each of them in turn.

“Detention,” Danneel says simply. She grins at AJ.

“You know you guys have changed the whole social standing at this school, don’t you?”

“Huh,” Misha says. “Well, I guess it needed a shake up anyway.”

Jared lifts his head to smile at Jensen and he was rewarded with a huge beaming grin from his boyfriend, and Jared can’t help but feel that maybe this whole situation at a point after all.


End file.
